Most video conferencing doesn't work via IPfire

Hi,

IPFire 2.27 (x86_64) - Core-Update 170

I started using IPfire in March 2022 and recently I realized that for some apps video calls don’t work anymore. I don’t use video often, so it took me a while to realize and so I don’t know if the problem appeared after a certain IPfire core update.

Affected apps, tested and confirmed with many callers:

  • Signal video, both PC desktop and phone apps (audio works fine)
  • WhatsApp video, both PC desktop and phone apps (audio works fine)
  • Some web-based video conferencing sites I use (audio works fine)

Interestingly enough, Teams video works, it’s the only app so far that I’ve seen to not be affected by this.

The symptoms are always the same - I can see my caller’s video, but he/she can’t see mine. They actually see the first one/few frame(s) of my video, after which my video freezes and keeps frozen for the rest of the call.

My camera works fine, the application is showing me my own video feed, it’s just the other caller that can’t see it.

Bypassing IPfire via a phone hotspot fixes the problem.
Disabling IPS in IPfire doesn’t help.

Things I haven’t tested yet:

  1. MTU (should I tinker with the IPfire’s Red Interface MTU?)
  2. Port forwarding (I don’t believe video apps like the ones I’ve listed are utilizing UPnP, are they?)

Maybe this depends on rules in your firewall. Do you have a proxy and do you block the traffic on ports 80/443 not passing by the proxy? Another rule of your firewall that could be responsible for this problem is blocking the DNS requests not addressed to IPFire.

Regradless, I suggest the following: while you call, open a console and issue the following command:

tail -f /var/log/messages

^c to exit.

This will show the kernel log activity in real time and give you more information to troubleshoot your problem.